Major League Baseball Player, Manager. Known as “Harry the Hat” for his habit of adjusting his hat at every at-bat, he played Major League baseball for 11 seasons (1940 to 1943, 1946 to 1951, 1955) as an outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds. He was the son of early 1900s Washington Senator pitcher Ewart Walker, and the brother of Brooklyn Dodgers star Fred “Dixie” Walker. Coming up in 1940 with the Cardinals, he played a handful of games with them in the 1940 and 1941 season before catching on as a role player in 1942. In 74 games that year he hit .311 and helped the Cardinals win the National League Pennant. In the World Series against the New York Yankees, he had a single, pitch-hitting at-bat (in which he struck out) as the Cardinals downed the Yankees 4 Games to 1 (the Yanks first World Series loss since 1926). The next year he came into his own, hitting .294 and being named a starter on the NL All-Star team while helping the Cardinals capture their second straight National League title. That year’s Series, a re-match with the Yankees, saw the Yanks avenge their previous year’s loss by taking the Baseball Championship 4 Games to 1. Harry Walker started all 5 games, but hit only a meager .167. He would miss the 1944 and 1945 seasons due to service in the United States Army during World War II, where he saw extensive combat in Europe, and received a Purple Heart, among other citations. Returning in 1946, he had a sub par year, hitting only .237, but contributed to the Cardinals taking the National League Pennant for the 4th time in 5 years. The 1946 World Series against the Ted Williams-led Boston Red Sox is consider one of the classics in Baseball History, with the Cardinals taking a hard-fought, seesaw Series 4 Games to 3. Unlike his two previous World Series performances, Harry Walker contributed greatly to the Cardinals cause this time by batting .412 with 6 RBIs, and had a hand in the deciding play of the Series. During the final game, with the score tied 3 to 3 in the bottom of the eighth inning and the Cards’ Enos Slaughter on first base, he hit a double off of the Red Sox’s Bob Klinger that facilitated Slaughter’s “Mad Dash” that scored the eventual Championship winning run. The next year, 1947, he started off very slowly, and was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for Ron Northey on May 3. Galvanized by the trade, he would go on to hit a remarkable .371 for the Phils, finishing the year with a .363 Batting Average and the National League Hitting Title (the first NL player to accomplish that while playing for two different teams in the same season). He also started in the outfield for the National League All-Star team, the first Phillie to be a All-Star starter since third baseman Pinky Whitney in 1937. After a decent 1948 season the Phillies traded him to the Cubs, who after 42 games into the 1949 season sent him and Harry “Peanuts” Lowery to the Reds for Hank Sauer and Frankie Baumholtz. Despite finishing the year with a .318 Batting Average the Reds send him to the Cardinals in the off season. He played 60 games in 1950 and only 8 games in 1951 before he retired to manage in the Cardinals Minor League system. In 1955, after replacing Eddie Stanky as Cardinals manager in May, he activated himself, and hit .357 in 11 games (most pinch-hitting). At the end of the season, however, he was replaced as manager by Fred Hutchinson. He would manage the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1964 to mid-1967, and the Houston Astros from 1968 to 1972. His career batting totals were 807 Games Played, 786 Hits, 385 Runs, 10 Home Runs, 214 RBIS and a career .296 Batting Average. He won 630 Games, and lost 610 Games as a manager. He left Professional Baseball in 1978, and served as the baseball coach for the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1978 to 1985. In 2000 UAB professor Larry Powell published the book “Bottom of the Ninth: An Oral History on the Life of Harry “The Hat” Walker”. (bio by: Russ Dodge)